Insurance Premium Tax

Maintaining the IPT Register: Overseas Insurers: Location of an agent

While it is preferable for an overseas insurer to appoint a UK-based agent to deal with their IPT obligations, we recognise that they may prefer to have one EU-based agent to deal with all their tax affairs in every member state in which they operate. Therefore, we will accept the appointment of an agent located anywhere within the EU. It does not matter whether the insurer has an existing EU-based agent or wishes to appoint someone based in another member state to act as their agent for the first time. The agent may deal with all the EU-tax affairs of the insurer, or may just be appointed to deal with UK IPT; the choice is entirely up to the insurer. For example, the insurer may have an existing UK-based tax representative and may decide that they would prefer to appoint an agent based in Belgium instead to deal with their UK IPT. Alternatively a newly registered insurer, who has just started to write business in several member states including the UK, may wish to appoint a German agent to act on their behalf. We would have to be satisfied that the nominated person was able to deal with the insurer’s IPT affairs correctly and that we were able to assure the insurer’s compliance; that is, arrangements are in place for us to have access to records in the UK should we require to see them. We can not accept an agent who is based outside the EU.